


good morning, good night

by inkedinserendipity



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, M/M, a series of snapshots, also a lil bit of taakitz, also featuring: taako is more emotionally stable and happier with his sister back, and his family at his side, barry is taako's best friend: the compelling argument by me, because....it's me, taako trusts barry with his sister which is basically like trusting him with his life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-28 23:15:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17192036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkedinserendipity/pseuds/inkedinserendipity
Summary: Lup and Taako have slept in many places in their lives. Most of the time, with each other; sometimes, without.(The ones without are always the worst.)





	good morning, good night

**Author's Note:**

> This is my TAZ secret santa gift for @mischiefstudios on tumblr, who requested some Taako and Lup interactions! Happy Candlenights!

 

 

The first beds they use aren’t beds at all.

They’re carpets; of stone, of grass, of dirt. Sometimes on the dangerous evenings, where the ground teems with all sorts of unsavory wildlife, both human and not, their beds are the twisted and spired branches of oak trees, high in the tips of the forest.

Their first real bed is in their aunt’s house. She’s a large elf, larger than any of the others in their family that have passed them along. Her face is haloed by a shock of red hair, and always tucked into her belt is a golden, wood-carved ladle. She, the house, and the beds, all smell of cinnamon and coriander.

Lup’s favorite color always was red, but for a time—for this short, too-short time—it was Taako’s, too.

* * *

Their aunt dies, so they leave their little beds behind without a backward glance. It’s a shame; though the bed was a little small for them, it was twin-sized, so they always would’ve fit, if they’d been allowed to stay.

Their beds this time are the rickety kind, of inns and hostels, filled with all sorts of hostile folk. Lup picks up the violin. Taako turns the silvers they’re given to gold. The first time they’re followed to their rooms by thieves or mercenaries, Lup learns how to control fire, too.

The very last bed they use in an inn, Lup burns to the floor. 

* * *

The dorms at the Institute are homely. Their classmates have no trouble adjusting. It occurs to Taako, for the first time, that some children grow up in the same bed their entire lives. He wonders what they would do if their beds went up in flames. He wonders what their favorite colors are, and if those change, too.

The first semester, neither of them sleep in their assigned beds. They’re given a room to themselves. They’re given a chest full of spare linens and blankets—part of their scholarship, see—and for the first year, that chest collects dust. They sleep on the floor, back-to-back as they always have, because there’s no point in having two separate beds if they’re not twin-sized.

* * *

Strangely enough, the quarters they’re assigned on the Starblaster are a comfortable size.

They’re not the massive, gaping holes-with-roofs that their dorms were, and they’re not made of literal dirt. Lup and Taako share their own room, and the curtains are red, and there’s enough space in the closet for all of Taako’s shoes. The day the two of them come tour the ship, they leave satisfied.

They’re walking down the gangplank, pointedly not-saluting the gnome who will be their Captain for two short months, and Taako says, “Y’know, those are the best digs we’ve ever got.”

Lup laughs. “Almost wish we could stay more months than just two.”

* * *

The world ends, and for the next three months, Lup and Taako sleep off the ship. First, near the court of the royal beasts, and after that, with the mongoose family. The smallest one develops a habit of curling up in the hollow of Lup’s neck. She purrs, which wakes Lup in the middle of the night, but Lup never moves her.

Taako doesn’t understand until another—a relative, Taako thinks, maybe a sibling, they’re not quite fluent enough yet for introductions—tucks itself against his shoulder and, whenever Taako tries to dislodge him, wraps his little tail beneath his armpit and clings.

After the first few nights, Taako stops trying.

Eventually, Barry’s curiosity overcomes his grief, his fear, and he noses his way out to their little campground as well. He’s the academic sort, the types whose most adventurous evenings included a tent and roasted marshmallows, so when Lup and Taako settle down to sleep, he treks back to the ship.

But he learns, quickly enough. Between the two of them, Lup has always had the better head for linguistics—after all, in every language, part of communication is nonverbal—but Barry keeps up with both of them reasonably well. Where Taako and Lup commit the words to memory, Barry writes them down. All of them. Painstaking and careful.

“You know, we miss you,” Barry says one day. The mongooses have taught them to knit crowns of flowers, and while neither Taako nor Lup will touch them, Barry wears his with a blush curved along his nose. Lup thinks it’s cute. Taako thinks she has poor taste.

Taako laughs. “You—sorry, you miss us?”

“We do,” Barry says firmly. Taako blinks. It’s perhaps the most confident Barry has ever sounded. “The whole crew and I. You miss breakfast.”

“Babe, we make our  _own_  breakfast,” Lup says, snappy as anything. “It’s you poor shmucks that are losing out.”

“You roast things over a fire,” Barry says. “We have a kitchen.”

“Eh. Honestly, my dude, cha’boy can work either way.”

“Not like there were kitchens in the forest,” Lup says, and shrugs. “Or in the inns, mostly.”

“Okay but we didn’t cook in the inns. Mostly we stole.”

“We paid for it!” Lup pauses. “Sometimes.”

Bluejeans is staring at them. “What?” Taako snaps, hackles up. He knows that look. That look means pity, and he’s not fucking interested.

“No, it’s nothing,” Barry says, fiddling nervously with his glasses. “I didn’t know you guys were homeless.”

“Born this way, babe,” Lup says, patting Taako’s knee in that way that means  _chill the fuck out, brother mine_. So the thought of spending an indefinite period of time with the same five assholes freaks him out, so what? It freaks Lup out, too. Other people aren’t permanent. Other people are just dust.

“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to say,” Barry says, in a streak of determination that is new on him, but suits him. “We wanted to see if you would join us for breakfast. Both—both of you.”

Taako snorts. “Captain’s orders, huh?”

“Mine, actually,” Barry says mildly. “Our Captain is a bit too fond of protocol to ever issue such a personal request. I, uh…I’m not, I guess.”

“Why?”

“Why do we miss you?”

_Pat pat_ , goes Lup’s hand again. Taako swats it away. “Yeah, that. You don’t even know us.”

To his surprise, Barry laughs. It startles the mongoose around Taako’s shoulder awake, and it chirrs sleepily in Barry’s direction. “Sorta a catch-22, isn’t it?” he says, grinning even in the face of Taako’s open animosity. “We can’t get to know you until you start eating breakfast with us. Or living on the ship. Or literally anything. I thought you guys liked your room?”

“We do, babe,” Lup reassures him. “It’s just…kinda weird.”

“Weird how?”

“Weird mostly in that it’s full of assholes,” Taako says, cutting Lup off abruptly. He doesn’t want to talk about this.

“We’ll think about breakfast,” Lup says, ignoring his warning glance entirely. It freaks people out, sometimes, how they can fight while presenting an entirely unified front; or it would, Taako thinks, if anyone knew them well enough to know they were arguing in the first place. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Bluejeans shrugs, pushes his glasses higher up on his nose. “Guess that’s as good as I can ask for,” he says, and stands. “Hope I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

He turns and leaves. His rounded boots crush dandelions in his wake, but they spring back up as he leaves, cutting a river of gold through the grass. 

“You know,” Lup says, once he’s out of earshot twice over, “I think he meant it.”

 

* * *

After breakfast the next morning, Taako stands in the doorframe of their room, Lup at his side. Four months they’ve been on this planet, and their room is entirely untouched. Still draped in pristine white blankets, a chest of spare linens gathering dust in the corner. The corners of the comforters—they have  _comforters_ —are still folded down.

Lup throws herself into one of the beds. “Soft,” she says appreciatively. Her body still bounces from the leap. She pats the space next to her. “C’mon, Koko.”

“Don’t call me that,” Taako says reflexively, and sits beside her, ever slower, ever careful. He’s not sure what he worried about; the bed doesn’t bite him. It’s a bed. The pristine white sheets are now smudged with the green and brown refuse of a four-month hiking trip.

He lays back, slowly, stomach still pleasantly full of chocolate chips and sugar. Call him superstitious, but full meals put him on edge. The day before their aunt died, she’d made them turkey, and it was the best they’d ever eaten. The day before the Starblaster left, they’d feasted at the press conference, and Taako ate so much he’d felt sick.

“It’s super comfortable,” Taako allows. He stretches out, slowly, and Lup snorts at him.

“’s not gonna eat you.”

“Shut up,” he mutters. His fingers curl in soft sheets. “Holy shit, Lup,” he breathes.

She leans next to him, with none of his reservations. “Yeah,” she says.

They lie there, side-by-side, marveling at soft sheets and a softer mattress, for hours.

And much later that day, when evening has well since fallen, they both curl side-by-side on Lup’s bed and fall asleep with their hands clasped together, just as they had when they were children. 

* * *

In the end, it’s not the dragon, but the volcano in which it roosted. Even now Taako’s not sure who ended the drake properly—maybe Magnus, he would love to add that to his tally of deaths—but he knows that Lup had grabbed the Light and run, calling a retreat even as it seared her fingers. He’d seen it, is the problem, and he sees it now; the pained twist to her lips as she held the Light, and let her fingers char to keep this world safe.

It wasn’t even the lava, no; this world wouldn’t let Lup go with such dignity. It was ash. With two hands free, Taako had clapped his scarf over his mouth, and Magnus had twisted his handkerchief, but only after Lup stumbled, coughing, the Light spilling from her fingers, did she have two hands free.

In the end, the Light was lost. But it was lost after Lup died, and she doesn’t know, and Taako doesn’t think they’ll tell her. She’ll be angry that they’ve given up on the Light, but honestly, Taako doesn’t see much point in protecting a plane that killed his sister.

Besides. It’s barren, now. After the explosion, the death count rose to the thousands, and for once in this miserable journey, Taako thinks their quest to find the Light and save the peoples of this world might have cost them more than will the Hunger.

It’s funny. It really is, when Taako thinks about it. Try as they might, they’re still monsters. No, they’re unto gods. Their actions have no consequences. Even though they nearly died, they will all walk free, but the people they killed, now ash and dust on the wind, will never breathe again.

A knock on the door tears Taako from his thoughts. “Come—” he tries, and it’s fitting that his voice, rusty with disuse, cracks on the first syllable. “Come in.”

His voice is far from inviting, but the door creaks open anyway. He doesn’t need the spilling light to burnish blue jeans to know who is behind the door.

“Hey, bud,” Barry says. “You okay?”

“Peachy,” Taako says, a wry twist to his lips. Perhaps twenty years ago Barry might have taken his words at face value, but not so any longer. He can’t hide from him—from any of the crew, in fact. That thought should scare him. It doesn’t. “Peachy keen, my dude.”

Barry sighs and walks over to the bed. Taako squints at him. “I bat in your direction,” he says, “but mostly definitely not at you. Sorry.”

Barry laughs. He sounds tired—nearly as tired as Taako feels. Taako wonders if he’s worked out why, yet. From Taako’s vantage point, it’s easy to see; it’s hard not to love Lup.

“Sorry, bud, but I’m not battin’ for you either.” He nudges Taako’s knee, and taken by surprise, Taako rolls over. Barry lowers himself onto the mattress with a sigh, then turns away from Taako, offering him his back. “Just thought you might want some company.”

Taako’s eyes sting, suddenly. He turns, too, and scoots back, until their backs are pressed firmly together. He says nothing. There’s nothing he can think to say.

But Barry—the same Barry who, years ago, stuttered through every single one of his words, in Common or mongoose—only says, slow and calm into the quiet of the night, “Good night, Taako.”

And if Taako can’t quite respond, well, he trusts that Barry knows how much that means.

* * *

The next evening, it’s Magnus. Magnus is hardly so graceful or so reserved. He draws Taako into a bearhug, and refuses to let go even when Taako insists that his spine is popping and Magnus better let the fuck go before he loses a finger.

Magnus, damn him, only laughs; he loosens his grip a little, but does not let go.

Eventually, Taako sheds the blankets, because Magnus is warmer than a sheet and a blanket and a comforter combined. He sleeps well that night.

And he sleeps well the rest of the nights until the world ends, always accompanied by someone; sometimes Magnus, sometimes Lucretia, who stays up talking with him well into the evening, painting nails or exchanging stories or just reading, by golden lamplight, until both of them are too exhausted to stay awake.

But most often it’s Barry who curls up at his side and helps him to sleep.

Then Lup comes back, her hand clasped tight in Taako’s. Taako hugs her first, and she hugs back, so crushing he thinks for a moment he can feel his ribs splinter.

Barry is soon behind him.

That night, he falls asleep with his twin sister in his arms, their hands clasped between them, in a bed that has seen every single human in the crew over the past three months.

* * *

A world ends, but it’s not theirs.

Instead, Lup and Taako scramble back to the ship, a pink crystal curled in Taako’s hands. He strings it hastily around his neck and clutches tight to one of the railings as the Starblaster soars through the space between planes—

And then he’s re-knit, his sister’s hand tight in his own.

Never again, they vow, his sister in the center. Never again will they let a civilization die to keep their enemy from growing stronger.

She was always stronger than he was. More kind, and more caring.

He hesitates in the doorway, that evening when night falls. The schedule of sunrise and sunset is offset in this new plane, and they’ve had to wait six more hours than they’re used to before sleeping, and Taako is exhausted, but he’s not sure where—where he should lie.

Lup’s already sprawled in her own bed. Ever at the other side of the room sits Taako’s bed, or rather, the bed he’s supposed to be using. In the years he’s been on this ship, he’s used it only a handful of times: twice, because he was injured and needed rest, and once, because Magnus decided to go mattress-surfing, and it was every man for themselves when it came to procuring said mattresses.

Lup’s head pops up from her pillow, and she sees him standing in the doorway. “Dummy,” she says, voice laced with affection even through the exhaustion cloyed thick around the edges. She holds out a hand, and he takes it. “Go to sleep.”

He curls around her, carefully, lowering their clasped hands between them. She manages one fond smile, full of forgiveness and all sorts of soft things he’s not quite sure he deserves, before she falls asleep.

He’s tired too, but he stays awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking of all the ways this evening could have hurt, and how it could have hurt Lup. He doesn’t want them to, ever. And he’ll move mountains to keep her safe.

* * *

When a muted knock sounds at the door, Lup is sound asleep. Taako pauses on the edge of the bed for a moment, listening, ears twitching, but she doesn’t stir.

“Hey, bud,” Barry says, voice hardly above a whisper when Taako opens the door. “She still asleep?”

“Yeah.” Taako shuts the door behind them, carefully. In the early years Barry’s whispering voice—his, and Magnus’s, and Lucretia’s besides—could hardly be called a whisper. In the years since, they’ve learned precisely how loudly to speak so that he, or Lup, could hear them.

They wind through the twisting corridors of the Starblaster, then out onto the verdant lawn that houses their resplendent ship. It’s deep night, and the stars that crown the Conservatory are radiant, sculptures of stories unto themselves. 

“So, tomorrow, huh?” Barry says. “You, uh—you ready, bud?”

“Uh, for  _sure_ ,” Taako scoffs. “All cha’boy’s gotta do is chuck a book in a mountain. Now—are you?”

Barry sits on the grass. After a mere moment of hesitation, Taako sits with him. There’s a phantom sensation like tiny little claws scraping along his shoulder, from some forty-seven years ago.

“No,” he says. “But then I don’t think I ever will be.”

Taako smiles. “Probably not. But that’s the good bit of all of this, Barold. You’ve got nothing but time. When this happens,” he says, soft, and they both know he doesn’t quite mean the performance, “it’ll be because you both want it to.”

He turns, then, so that their knees are brushing together, both cross-legged in a field of grass whose flowers shine in dabs of color on a dark green easel. “And Lup does want it to.”

“I know,” Barry says. “I know, I just—I’m nervous.”

Taako laughs at that. After forty-seven years, his laugh is not unkind. “You’re always nervous about something, my man.”

“She’s amazing,” Barry says. “I know I don’t—need to be telling you this, necessarily, but, uh… she really is. She’s the most incredible woman I’ve ever met. If this—if we…I’ll count them as blessings, you know. Every day. Every morning and every night. If I can love her as she deserves.”

Taako’s smiling, suddenly, and he can’t quite stop. “You know something, Bluejeans?” he says.

Barry looks at him, nervous and excited and a hundred other things besides. “What?”

Taako’s smile is for Barry when he says, “I trust you.”

* * *

The next evening, for the first time his hundred and fifty years, Taako sleeps alone. 

* * *

And the next morning, he makes pancakes, filled with chocolate chips and sugar. 

* * *

Taako wakes with a start. It takes him a brief, panic-filled moment to regain his bearings. He’s on the deck of the Starblaster, and the sun on this strange one-sunned, one-mooned world is rising, and there are snores coming from in front of him.

Taako scrubs tiredly at his eyes. He hates naps even worse than he hates sleeping or meditation. They’re useless chunks of rest that leave him more tired than when he fell asleep. Of course, he hasn’t been sleeping well at all recently, but then, none of them have.

“Sun’s up, get your bum up,” Taako says, and pokes Bluejeans in the elbow. Barry snorts awake, leaving his glasses behind on the table in the violent movement.

“Huh?”

“We fell asleep,” Taako says, and nods at the map spread wide between them, pockmarked with circles and then, black x’s. “It’s morning.”

“Shit,” Bluejeans swears. When he puts on his glasses, the bags beneath his eyes only seem to grow worse. “Damn it. I was hoping to section off the eastern coast yesterday.”

“We got about halfway through.”

Barry sighs, resting his head in the crook of his elbow. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess we did.”

Eventually Magnus makes an appearance on the deck. When Davenport joins him, he’s levitating three cups of coffee between his fingers. One he gives to Barry: one sugar, no cream and no milk; one he gives to Taako, three sugars, no cream; and one he gives to Magnus, black. The first cup of tea in his other hand he leaves for himself, and the second, he sets aside. Merle rises early, but has started to pray in the mornings, regularly. Merle doesn’t do much anything with regularity, but they’re all trying new things, looking for Lup.

The sun winds up the horizon, toward its peak, and back down. Neither Taako nor Barry leave their chairs. The parts of the continent in which they have not yet looked have grown alarmingly scarce. Merle shows up around noon to claim his tea, now cold, which Taako re-warms without a sideways glance, and which Merle accepts with a quiet thanks.

It’s strange and stiff and formal. It reminds Taako of their first days aboard the Starblaster. He’d slept in strange places during their first months on this voyage, too. And now, during their last months, he’s doing the same.

Davenport and Merle leave, eventually, to play their Euchre, and Magnus goes in search of Lucretia. Taako’s marking off the last reaches of the coast they’ve already scoured when Barry says, “Taako, what if she’s gone?”

Taako looks at him, blank, and asks, “Who?”

* * *

Nights on the road, both before Glamour Springs and after, leave his clothes stained with a highly unattractive shade of brown and green. These carpets of grass, and dirt, and stone, leave his back aching and his fingers rigid with the nighttime chill. 

* * *

Taako’s not sure how he does it. The human’s known him for maybe two months at this point. But both of them—both the human and the dwarf, both of them with names that start with M, how cosmically inconvenient—know him far better than they should. Far better than he’s honestly comfortable with.

The evening after Goldcliff, and the races and the rose petal tree, Magnus knocks on his door late at night and asks, “Can I come in?”

“No,” Taako says.

“Cool,” Magnus says, and opens the door anyway.

Taako squints at him, half a glare of anger, half a flinch back from the light. “What do you want, my  _dude?_ ”

“I pulled out the couch,” Magnus says, unaffected by Taako’s irritation. “Turns out it’s one of those extendable ones. And Merle was just kinda sitting at the kitchen counter, drinking tea, and we decided, well…it’s warmer,” he says lamely. “Y’know, if all three of us sleep together.”

“Gross,” Taako says.

Magnus rolls his eyes. Something about this is so familiar that Taako’s heart twinges. He shakes it away. He’s good at that—ignoring things that don’t make sense. His life is riddled with them.

But instead of being deterred, Magnus strides forward and grabs Taako’s hand. “All right,” he says, and hefts Taako over his shoulder. “Up you go.”

“Hey! Put me down! Did you—you great log, put me down I swear to  _god_  I will hex you right between your ears—”

“Found him,” Magnus says, the corners of a smile dancing around his words.

“’Bout time,” Merle grumbles. He’s wearing an honest-to-gods nightcap, and a  _gown_. Taako pulls a face.

Magnus sprawls back, him and his frustrating innate ability to make himself comfortable wherever he goes. Taako picks his way beneath the blankets, and glares at Magnus when he tries to cuddle. “You  _broil_ ,” Taako snips, and scoots away to demonstrate his point. “Go to sleep.”

“Night, kid.”

“Fuck off, old man.”

Magnus laughs. “Good night, you guys.”

* * *

Somehow, Taako wakes up with his head resting on Magnus’s shoulder. Merle’s legs are kicked over his stomach. And somewhere in the middle, the back of his hand rests against Magnus’s fingers.

But it hardly matters, because Taako is the first one up.

Besides, he’s too busy making pancakes to think about any of it.

* * *

“Cold,” Taako gasps, curling in on himself. “Cold cold  _cold_ , how do you even—do you even have blood?”

“Not precisely,” Kravitz says, sounding amused, damn him. “Would you like another blanket?”

“Uh, for  _sure_ ,” Taako says. “I’d like to not lose all my limbs to your ice bits.”

Kravitz rummages around in his closet. “Chest,” Taako mutters. “On the bottom. Grab a blanket. One of the white ones.”

Kravitz pulls it out, and looks at it. “You know,” he says, as he drapes the blanket over Taako. He takes the time to tuck in the corners beneath the blanket. Something about the consideration in his movement and his gaze heats Taako’s face all the way to his ears. “I didn’t take you as the sort of elf who would want a plain white anything in his room.”

Taako sniffs haughtily, even as he snuggles back against Kravitz’s waiting chest. “Well, you should know by now, kemosabe. Taako’s an elf full of surprises.”

Kravitz’s laugh is rich and warm against his shoulder. He leans over to press a kiss to his temple, soft and sweet. “I’m starting to learn, yes.”

* * *

Taako is just about the most exhausted he’s ever been.

So he saved the world. That’s great and all, of course, except for the fact that he’s already done that dozens of times. No, of far more consequence—and far more exhaustion—is that he has his family back,  he has his  _sister_  back, incorporeal though she might be.

He’s covered in mud and sweat and some dried blood from Wonderland, or maybe also the legions of the Hunger that crawled out from their black opal palace, his head is sort of fuzzy and also spinning, and Taako sort of wants to lay down on the floor and go to sleep for half a century.

“White blankets,” Lup says. A hiss threads through her voice nowadays. The scientist that lives in his brain wonders whether that’s related to the fact that her eyesockets are crammed full of fire. When she looks to him, amusement dances in the embers of her eyes. “Really, Koko? Seems kinda boring.”

“Don’t call me that,” Taako mutters, flopping back on the mattress. It’s soft, and he’s marring the pristine blankets with all sorts of muck accumulated from just about the longest two days ever. “And cha’boy is not  _boring_.”

“No, of course not,” Lup says, voice crackling with ill-concealed laughter. “Just sentimental.”

Taako shrugs. “Yeah,” he says. “Sometimes.”

His eyes are closed, so his only indication that Lup is hovering over him is a burst of oranges and reds like a sunset painted against his eyelids. He looks up, and she’s hovering over him, arms crossed behind her head as though she were looking up at the stars, except she’s lying upside-down.

“Neat trick.”

“Isn’t it?” she says, half-glee, half-resignation. “Sorta comes with the job description. Stuck in a shitty not-body and all that.”

“Barry’s working that out for you.”

“Yeah,” she says, her eyes crinkling at the mention of Barry’s name. “He sure is, isn’t he? Even though your boy might be a little pissed.”

Taako waves a hand through the air as if to dismiss the notion. “He’ll come around,” Taako says confidently.

“Seems like you know him pretty well.”

Taako just shrugs him again. “He’s a cool dude.”

“Ah yes, a ringing endorsement from my beloved brother: a cool dude! You’re  _dating_  him, you—oh. That was a pun.”

Taako winks at her wordlessly. He means it in jest, but his eye sticks closed, and the other joins it. He’s extremely tired.

Warmth blooms along his side. Taako flops a hand in her general direction, but it passes through her body in a blaze of heat.

“Sorry,” she says, softer than he’s heard her in twelve years.

He scoffs. “For not having a body? Dummy.”

“For leaving.”

Taako’s stomach drops. His throat, abruptly dry, betrays him as he says, “Yeah. Thanks.”

For a long, long moment, there is silence. It’s weighted and heavy and entirely too warm, the sort of claustrophobic that Taako  _despises_.

“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” he says to dismiss the silence, just as soft. “I love you, Lup.”

She laughs, a little surprised, a little pleased. He understands; these are words they hardly ever say.

“I love you too,” she says, and warmth threads along his knuckles as she twines her hands with his.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, find me at inkedinserendipity on tumblr!


End file.
